Playing as a woman, I think I got the tiniest taste of real world sexism.

I've been playing Dungeons & Dragons on and off for 15 years now in multiple campaigns that

got to level 20, but three years ago I did something new. I played a female character,

or a five person party, three men and two women in real life, in character it's three women and

two men because of me. As the years have gone by, I've started to notice little things here and

in how the NPCs treat me. I'm trying to play this character as kind of the take charge type

person, but the NPCs tend to brush me off when I feel like they shouldn't. I'm a powerful

sorcerer with a kind of dark reputation, so I would expect that they would show me some respect,

but often they just don't. And it feels like certain other playable characters get just a little

more recognition. A little more respect for reasons I can't quite put my finger on.

I've brought it up to the dungeon master a couple of times and he's always had a reason.

Like, well, this NPC talked to you like that because of X reason, or when the barbarian in that

group did X, they really are in the king's respect because of Y reason. It's like each individual

instance had a reason that could be valid and no one instance is a big deal, but it's just that

it kept happening. I've played with this dungeon master before and never felt like this before,

so it was kind of baffling to me. Then some more time went by and I started noticing that the NPCs,

the non-playable characters, would talk to the other female characters like that too,

and it was always the male characters who seemed to get the respect. And at first I was like,

nah, that's crazy. The DM is an old friend of mine and I know he's not sexist or anything,

but once I noticed it, I kept noticing it, and I didn't say anything because come on,

how whiny would it be for a straight white dude to complain about low grade fantasy sexism?

Honestly, sometimes I'd notice a little thing and be sure it was sexism, but then next time,

...